


all the string can do

by ships_to_sail



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Banter, David Rose Appreciation Society, Flirting, Fluff, M/M, Music, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Trolling, rides home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29313252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/pseuds/ships_to_sail
Summary: The tips of his fingers brush the edge of the CD holder velcroed to the inside of the visor and his jaw drops. “What?”“Nothing! No, I just. Didn’t know they let the exhibits from the Smithsonian take international day trips.”Patrick gives David a ride home. Musical mockery ensues (until it doesn't)
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 13
Kudos: 124





	all the string can do

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally supposed to be part of my "129 Ways to Catch a Husband" fic but then it got too long and I liked it a bit too much to let it stay there, so here it is instead!

The door is barely closed before: “What are you doing?”

“Changing the radio.

“But. I. Okay.” The click of another door and Patrick slips them smoothly into traffic. It’s not far enough from the store to the motel, but he’d made David put on his seatbelt anyway. 

“Look, I know it’s only like a two second drive, but that’s two seconds too long for whatever whiny country song was  _ literally  _ just finishing.”

“Hey, now. Take it easy on Dolly Parton.” He’s kidding, and his voice is teasing, but there’s a heat in his eyes that makes David blush. At all. He holds up his hand in surrender. Which is how the tips of his fingers brush the edge of the CD holder velcroed to the inside of the visor and his jaw drops. “What?”

“Nothing! No, I just. Didn’t know they let the exhibits from the Smithsonian take international day trips.”

“Okay, you do know that you’re older than me by several —” 

“ _ Several _ ?!”

“A few?”

David cuts him a glare that makes Patrick laugh, and David is distracted by flipping through the CDs.

“Oh god, is this —  _ Blink-182 _ ? And the  _ Titanic  _ soundtrack? Is this  _ The Slim Shady EP?!  _ I know CDs aren’t exactly new but how have you not purchased a physical piece of music since 2000?”

“Ha ha. My mom sent me a second round of stuff and this happened to be in it. I was feeling...nostalgic.”

“Mmm.” David is doing that thing where he presses his lips together to keep his smile from radiating outward and knocking Patrick backwards.

Patrick has only known David a week and the maneuver is already losing its efficacy. 

“In that case, I vote you either switch solidly to spotify or you dig into that time capsule of yours and at least pull out some classics worth having to hand. Whitney. Celine — and  _ not  _ “My Heart Will Go On”. Tina. Cher, if you have it by some god forsaken chance.”

He’s rambling a bit, and they’ve been parked out in front of the hotel since he started listing divas, but Patrick is apparently in no mood to make him stop. 

“Any other requests for the DJ, David?”

David rolls his eyes and pops open the car door, the smile hiding in the corner of his mouth pushing his cheekbones into even sharper relief when he says, “let’s see how you handle the basics.”

The next evening, when Patrick offers him another ride, David’s eyes go straight to the CD holder the minute his seatbelt is buckled. Patrick can hear the little choke of excitement before he even gets in the car.

“How’d I do?”

David opens his mouth, and then closes it. He clears his throat and tries to say casually, “still a little too much Shania for my taste, but. I  _ very  _ solid first attempt.”

“So, ‘That Don’t Impress You Much?’”

“Oh god. No.”

“What, David? ‘From This Moment On’, ‘No One Needs to Know’.

“It’s evil how good you are at that.”

“Well. No better way to make this into a ‘Party of Two’.”

“I will throw myself and then my death will be on your conscience, is that what you want?”

“You wouldn’t die. Break an arm. Maybe.”

David squawks and Patrick laughs and in the shuffle of the noise and the affront, David plucks a CD from it’s spot and slides it into the center console, loving that split second right before the automatic feeder takes the CD from his hand. Tina Turner’s voice fills the car, joining their little chorus of joy:

_ “I was thinking about parking the other night” _

Patrick nods, and David watches Patrick nod, trying not to follow the line of his jaw with his eyes. He forces himself to stare at the road, the beds of his nails, the palms of his hands, as Tina sings and Patrick hums along.

“You know, I would have taken you more for a Mariah guy.”

“And why’s that?”

“Your sister told me. Specifically. That it was possible that Mariah Carey is the only living person you love.”

“I told her I loved her last year!”

“......”

It’s only the length of the silence that reminds David that this is not the timeline most families operated on in terms of exchanging affection.

“And besides. Could you blame me?”

“For Alexis? Or for Mariah?”

“Both, in different ways.”

Another laugh — Patrick sets a new record for laughter, types of laugh, frequency and duration, every time he spends more than ten seconds alone with David. He’s just about to respond further when David sits up a bit and sort of...not shushes him, but makes it very clear that he’s ready to be done talking. 

They’re in the split beat of silence between the songs, and it takes Patrick a second to remember what the second track on this album is.

_ “I call you when I need you, my heart’s on fire” _

Even in the short amount of time they’ve known each other, Patrick has heard David’s speech about “just listening to the lyrics” and, well. He’s not wrong. In lots of songs, this one included, the heavy hammer of the lyrics gets wrapped in the cotton of the beat. It’s something Patrick usually prefers, if he’s being honest. He can hit himself more times with the hammer that way, before the whole thing cracks to pieces. 

But this time, he’s not listening to the lyrics. He’s watching David listen to the lyrics, and it slips something into place inside him, right underneath his diaphragm. It feels like a bubble, but cuts like a razor when he breathes. 

There’s a show he likes to watch when he can’t sleep, about these glassblowers who are competing to see who can be the best glassblower in a bunch of different arenas. Each artist takes sand and mica and more heat than Patrick has ever seen — enough heat that it’s like he can feel it radiating through his TV, waves that roll off the ovens and the tools until the glassblowers are drenched in sweat — and combine them in ways to create some of the most fragile, delicate pieces of art he’s ever seen. And he knows it’s not always fair to think of life in metaphors, but there’s something about him that always makes him feel better — disparate elements, combined through rough heat and gentle treatment, make the most beautiful things, and that beauty can be incredibly fragile. It reminds him to take care of the things and people he comes across in the world. 

Watching David listening to “The Best”, and then the beginning of “You Know Who” as they pull into the motel parking lot, Patrick feels that same feeling he gets late at night, the light from his laptop illuminating his room at Ray’s in ghostly blues and gunmetal greys. He watches David and feels a little bit like sand in the crucible, ready for a mix of color he can’t predict and the kind of heat that transforms. 

“Thank you for the ride home, Patrick.”

David isn’t listening anymore, not really, but that feeling hasn’t gone away, that tickle under Patrick’s ribcage dangerously near his heart. 

“Any time, David. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Just not before —”

“10am, I know. Not a morning person.”

“Oh, I was going to offer to come in at 8, but. If you insist, 10am it is.”

Patrick’s smile is intensely fond, and the fact that David only catches the tail end of it as he slams the door behind him is one of the cruelties of the universe. “See you at 10.”

David waves to Patrick over his shoulder as he makes his way into his room, and Patrick watches him as he backs out, and then in the rearview until he’s around the bend and out of sight of the motel. There’s an idea, hatching in the back of his brain, the smallest shadow on the cave wall and he won’t look right at it for fear of spooking it away, but.

It’s an idea. A project. Another living metaphor, about listening, and longing, and setting his heart on fire. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the gorgeous _History of Love_ by Nicole Krauss:
> 
> "There was a time when it wasn’t uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bunch of string in their pockets, but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance between two people using a string was often small; sometimes the smaller the distance, the greater the need for the string.
> 
> The practice of attaching cups to the ends of string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world’s first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who left for America.
> 
> When the world grew bigger, and there wasn’t enough string to keep the things people wanted to say from disappearing into the vastness, the telephone was invented.
> 
> Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person’s silence.”


End file.
